Smith College president Mary Maples Dunn and Mount Holyoke College president
Elizabeth T. Kennan at the opening of the Five College Women's Studies Research
Center in 1991

On the Retirement of Two Uncommon Women

The Five College Women's Studies Research Center will celebrate National
Women's History Month (March) by paying tribute to Elizabeth T. Kennan,
president of Mount Holyoke College, and Mary Maples Dunn, president of Smith
College, on Tuesday, March 7, at 8 PM in Gamble Auditorium. Both Kennan and
Dunn will retire at the end of the 1994-1995 academic year. As part of the
tribute, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, professor of history and American studies at
Smith College, will deliver a talk entitled "On the Retirement of Uncommon
Women." Opening remarks will be presented by Gail A. Hornstein, professor of
psychology and education at Mount Holyoke College and director of the Five
College Women's Studies Research Center.

Elizabeth T. Kennan, president of Mount Holyoke College since 1978, is a
specialist in medieval monasticism and intellectual history. Mary Maples Dunn
has been president of Smith College since 1985. Her research interests include
women and religion in colonial America and the history of the Society of
Friends.

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz is a nationally recognized specialist on the history
of women in higher education. She is the author of several books, including
Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century
to the Present, and Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's
Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s.

The Five College Women's Studies Research Center, founded in 1991, is supported
by a consortium of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The center provides visiting
residencies for feminist scholars from the United States and abroad, and draws
on one of the largest concentrations of women's studies scholars in the country
to sponsor lecture series, faculty seminars, and conferences. The center has
quickly become a lively site for scholarly activity in women's studies,
attracting a wide variety of participants, including faculty, students, and
members of the local community.